Recent Facebook Hack Wasn’t For Influencing Voters

Facebook recently disclosed a hack in which unauthorized persons had managed to access 30 million accounts. The initial reports suggested that these hackers could be working for a foreign state to influence voters ahead of the midterm elections in the United States. According to a new report, the hackers only wanted to sell deceptive ads using the accounts that they had accessed. Their motive wasn’t influencing voters on Facebook.

The Wall Street Journal reports, citing people that are familiar with Facebook’s internal investigation, that the hackers were a part of a purported digital marketing company and that they only wanted to use the data to sell deceptive advertising.

When Facebook disclosed the hack, it said that the persons had been able to access basic information such as contact details and names for 14 million accounts and other information like relationship statuses and recent search histories for an additional 15 million users. They didn’t or could access any information on the remaining one million users, apparently.

Even if the hackers weren’t working to undermine the country’s democracy, it still doesn’t justify why this happened. Facebook has confirmed or denied this report as yet. It’s not publicly commenting on the identity of the hackers as well since the FBI investigation into the matter is still ongoing.